The German Spy Who Tried To Murder J.P. Morgan Jr.

May 2024 · 2 minute read

As Glen Cove Heritage noted, the details about how Erich Muenter wound up in the United States, and what he did before then, are sketchy at best. According to Info Please, he was born on March 25, 1871, in Hanover, Germany, and by 1889 had wound up in Chicago.

He apparently had a fondness for foreign languages, picking them up with relative ease and speaking them, English in particular, with such a slight German accent that most people who knew him thought he might have had a slight speech impediment.

By 1906, Muenter was teaching at Harvard. Also by that time, he was beginning to show signs that he might have some issues. Friends and colleagues would later report that he showed intense interests in mysticism and obscure philosophies, as well as books about mental illness.

Then his wife died of poisoning. Her family would later receive a pamphlet, purportedly sent by Muenter, in which he claimed that he promised to "annihilate" Chicago and Cambridge, Massachusetts, if the family continued accusing him of the crime. Also in that pamphlet, according to Hoosier State Chronicles, he allegedly claimed that he fled Massachusetts because the state inflicted severe punishments on Christian Scientists — a sect that eschews modern medical care — whenever someone died after having refused medical treatment.

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